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Synagogues are built around the idea of organized worship -- the notion that Judaism should be practiced at a central address where activities can be held, congregants can study, a rabbi can lead, and officers can fundraise. Yet Philadelphia's Unstructured Synagogue Havurah shares very few of these elements. Indeed, the group has no dues, no building, no officers and no...

"I'm a bit of a duck-billed platypus," said Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the author of Wrestling With God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition , as a form of introduction. He then went on to share his personal odyssey as a gay, Orthodox rabbi -- as well as his views on homosexuality and Torah -- to an audience gathered last...

For Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, the conflict between Islam and the West is centered around religious beliefs, and the actions that adherence to faith can evoke. "We can craft a legacy of bloodshed in the name of God," he said, "or peacemaking in the name of God." Hirschfield, the president of CLAL: the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, appeared...

The conference room buzzed with a focused kind of chatter as dozens of rabbis and rabbinical students from the Philadelphia area and beyond discussed, analyzed and debated the talmudic passage at hand. Taken from a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, this particular text raised an age-old question: Is it okay to tell a white lie in order to spare somebody's...

Tiferet Beth Israel preschoolers and their teachers, Nancie Dall (left) and Diane Goldbacher, enjoy an imaginary trip to the rainforest they created in class. Over the past few months, children at the Blue Bell synagogue have discovered the beauty, diversity and significance of such endangered areas.